---
title: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Overview
summary: An overview of the infrastructure-as-code approach used in the FlowMart e-commerce platform
sidebar:
    label: 01 - IaC Overview
    order: 1
---

# Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Overview

This document provides an overview of the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach used to manage and provision the infrastructure for the FlowMart e-commerce platform.

## What is Infrastructure as Code?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an approach to infrastructure management where infrastructure resources are defined and provisioned through machine-readable definition files, rather than through manual processes or interactive configuration tools. This approach allows us to:

- **Version control** our infrastructure definitions alongside our application code
- **Automate** the provisioning and management of infrastructure
- **Standardize** configurations across different environments
- **Document** our infrastructure setup as living code rather than static documentation
- **Test** infrastructure changes before deploying to production

## Our IaC Tech Stack

For the FlowMart e-commerce platform, we use the following technologies for our infrastructure management:

### Primary Tools

| Tool | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| **Terraform** | Infrastructure provisioning across cloud providers (primary tool) |
| **Kubernetes (K8s)** | Container orchestration |
| **Helm Charts** | Kubernetes application deployment packaging |
| **GitHub Actions** | CI/CD pipeline automation |
| **AWS CloudFormation** | Specific AWS infrastructure components |

### Additional Supporting Tools

| Tool | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| **Terragrunt** | Terraform code organization and management |
| **Packer** | Virtual machine image building |
| **Ansible** | Configuration management |
| **Prometheus & Grafana** | Monitoring and alerting |
| **ELK Stack** | Logging |

## Infrastructure Architecture

Our infrastructure is organized into the following logical components:

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    classDef networkInfra fill:#e1d5e7,stroke:#9673a6,stroke-width:2px
    classDef computeInfra fill:#d5e8d4,stroke:#82b366,stroke-width:2px
    classDef datastoreInfra fill:#dae8fc,stroke:#6c8ebf,stroke-width:2px
    classDef securityInfra fill:#f8cecc,stroke:#b85450,stroke-width:2px
    classDef monitoringInfra fill:#fff2cc,stroke:#d6b656,stroke-width:2px

    subgraph "Networking Infrastructure"
        VPC[VPC & Subnets]
        IGW[Internet Gateway]
        NLB[Network Load Balancer]
        Route53[DNS - Route53]
    end
    
    subgraph "Compute Infrastructure"
        EKS[EKS Cluster]
        EC2[EC2 Instances]
        Lambda[Lambda Functions]
    end
    
    subgraph "Data Storage"
        RDS[RDS Databases]
        DynamoDB[DynamoDB Tables]
        S3[S3 Buckets]
        ElastiCache[ElastiCache Redis]
    end
    
    subgraph "Security"
        IAM[IAM Roles & Policies]
        SG[Security Groups]
        WAF[WAF & Shield]
        Secrets[Secrets Manager]
    end
    
    subgraph "Monitoring & Logging"
        CloudWatch[CloudWatch]
        Prometheus[Prometheus]
        Grafana[Grafana Dashboards]
        ELK[ELK Stack]
    end
    
    %% Connections
    VPC --> IGW
    IGW --> NLB
    NLB --> EKS
    Route53 --> NLB
    
    EKS --> SG
    EC2 --> SG
    Lambda --> SG
    
    EKS --> RDS
    EKS --> DynamoDB
    EKS --> S3
    EKS --> ElastiCache
    
    IAM --> EKS
    IAM --> Lambda
    IAM --> RDS
    
    CloudWatch --> EKS
    CloudWatch --> RDS
    CloudWatch --> Lambda
    Prometheus --> EKS
    Grafana --> Prometheus
    ELK --> EKS
    
    %% Apply styles
    class VPC,IGW,NLB,Route53 networkInfra
    class EKS,EC2,Lambda computeInfra
    class RDS,DynamoDB,S3,ElastiCache datastoreInfra
    class IAM,SG,WAF,Secrets securityInfra
    class CloudWatch,Prometheus,Grafana,ELK monitoringInfra
```

## Repository Structure

Our infrastructure code is organized as follows:

```
infrastructure/
│
├── terraform/                  # Terraform configuration
│   ├── environments/           # Environment-specific configurations
│   │   ├── dev/
│   │   ├── staging/
│   │   └── production/
│   ├── modules/                # Reusable Terraform modules
│   │   ├── networking/
│   │   ├── compute/
│   │   ├── database/
│   │   └── monitoring/
│   └── global/                 # Global resources (e.g., Route53)
│
├── kubernetes/                 # Kubernetes manifests
│   ├── base/                   # Base configurations
│   └── overlays/               # Environment-specific overlays (Kustomize)
│
├── helm-charts/                # Helm charts for application deployment
│
├── scripts/                    # Utility scripts
│
└── packer/                     # Packer templates for image building
```

## Deployment Principles

1. **Infrastructure Changes via Pull Requests**: All infrastructure changes must go through a pull request process, with automated testing and reviews.

2. **Environment Promotion**: Changes are first deployed to development, then staging, and finally production, with appropriate testing at each stage.

3. **Immutable Infrastructure**: We prefer to replace rather than modify infrastructure components.

4. **Least Privilege**: We follow the principle of least privilege for all IAM roles and security groups.

5. **Automated Rollbacks**: Our CI/CD pipelines include automated rollback capabilities if deployments fail.

## Next Steps

For more detailed information about our infrastructure as code setup, please refer to the following documents:

- [Terraform Implementation](./02-terraform-implementation.mdx)
- [Environment Setups](./03-environment-setups.mdx)
- [CI/CD Pipelines](./04-cicd-pipelines.mdx) 